LL-L "History" 2007.04.02 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L  -  02 April 2007 - Volume 01

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From: "Bryan E. Schulz" <bryans at lodging1.com>
Subject: LL-L "History" 2007.04.01 (06) [E]

When I suggested that Finnish was related to Sanskrit, I had no idea that
there would be such a response!  Thanks to John, we scratched an old itch of
mine.  I have been trying to find my source for the connection.  It must be
lost.  It is important to remember that John is not saying that Sanskrit is
the base language for Finnish but that there are many good reasons to
believe that  Finnish was significantly and directly influenced by
Sanskrit.  I believe that a large contributor was the 'Viking' expansion.
This expansion created an intellectual exchange route on the back of
commerce and religion.

I read articles relating to the origins of Latin and have found that it is
heavily influenced by the Celtic languages.  Am I correct in assuming that
there was a general collection of languages  from all the compass
points that reached its focal point in Latin?  After maturing as an common
language, I am assuming that German was derived from Latin and then English
was derived from German. Was denks du?  Also, Saint Cyrus of Cyrillic fame,
made some puzzling transformations of the Greek alphabet to record the
native language of the "Russians".  There may be additional arguements for a
Sanskrit influence there.


Bryan E. Schulz

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: History

Hi, Bryan!

You lost me somewhere along the way ...

   - The Romance and Celtic language branches grew from a common branch
   off Indo-European. They are therefore more closely related to each other
   than to other Indo-European branches. In Roman times, Latin (Romance) and
   Gaulish (Celtic) were to a certain degree mutually intelligible, but
   apparently only in the sense that certain words could be made out here and
   there (which is why Romans in Gaul needed .
   - Latin is only one of many Romance languages and is not the earliest
   or only early one; it is only the most noted ("powerful") early one. It grew
   from a mixture of Italic Romance languages with Etruscan (and other Old
   Italic), Greek, Germanic and Celtic admixtures. When we say that "Latin is
   the ancestor of modern Romance languages (such as Italian, Spanish,
   Romanian)" it is a case of simplification. Latin as we know it, used to
   serve as a "high" language, as a literary language and as an imperial lingua
   franca already during most of the Roman period, and there were many socially
   and regionally distributed spoken varieties alongside it. Modern Roman
   languages were derived from various spoken varieties that we refer to as
   "Vulgar Latin," though some of those may have been separate languages in
   Roman times already, just weren't written because they were considered ...
   well, "vulgar."
   - German is only one of many Germanic languages. It developed from
   Common Germanic (and please note the difference between "German" and
   "Germanic") and probably took on special features because of Celtic and
   other substrates of languages that used to be spoken in the south before
   Germanic southward expansion. While during the Middle Ages it took on Latin
   influences like virtually all other European languages, German did not
   descend from Latin, nor did any other Germanic language descend from
   Latin or from any other Romance language.
   - German is not the ancestor of English. The languages from which Old
   English developed were varieties of Old Saxon, Anglic, Old Jutish, Old Low
   Frankish and Old Frisian -- not Old German. Later, Old Scandinavian
   influenced English, then medieval Norman French, besides Latin in learned
   and religious circles.  I say "influenced," not "descended from."
   - Personally, I do not consider St. Cyril's changes in the development
   of the Cyrillic script from the Greek script "puzzling," stunning or
   anything of the sort. You will know what I mean if you take a look at
   varieties of the Old Cyrillic script (such as is used for Old Church
   Slavonic). Cyril needed to add symbols to represent what he considered
   Slavonic sounds that were alien to Greek. The modern form of the Cyrillic
   script is the result of centuries of permutations with little to no
   reference to the Greek script.
   - Even if there were contacts with the Sanskrit-speaking or -writing
   world, I simply cannot see how transformations from Greek to Cyrillic script
   could be attributable to the देवनागरी Devanāgarī script (with which Sanskrit
   and some modern languages of the northern Indian Subcontinent are written).
   However, please do bear in mind that the European scripts and the Indic
   scripts are in fact distant relatives with roots in the Near East.

Please don't get me wrong.  I'm all for considering and exploring ancient
Eurasian contacts. But I believe we must stay away from unsubstantiated
ideas and flights of fancy.

Clearly, there used to be a lot of traffic between the Russian steppes, the
Caucasus and Anatolia in the east and Western Europe in the west, and this
includes occasional contacts (e.g. trading) as well as migration.
Furthermore, there was the Silk Road -- and we have no idea exactly how
ancient it is -- that ran between Constantinopel (today's Istanbul in
Western Turkey) and 長安 Chang'an (today's 西安 Xi'an, a city in Central
Northern China).  There are indications that not only wares were transported
along it but people and knowledge as well.  Alexander's Macedonian conquest
followed about the western half of it, apparently up to Transoxania in
today's Uzbekistan.  There are now ethnic groups along the way that consider
themselves (in part) descendants of Macedonian soldiers.

Information and assumedly people used to be transported across Eurasia very
early.  Most people traveled only parts of the way, some apparently all the
way. The Indian Subcontinent and, north of it, the heartland of Central Asia
may be seen as halfway marks; they had direct exchanges with both China and
the Eastern Mediterranean region.

Please note what I mentioned in my introduction to the Kannada language (
lowlands-l.net/anniversary/kannada-info.php) at our anniversary site -- and
bear in mind that Kannada is not an Indo-European language but a Dravidian
language now used in Southern India (though it appears to have been shifted
there from the north):

Of particular interest to European tradition is that a Kannada skit dialogue
is featured in a Greek burlesque play, the Charition mime, which is found on
Papyrus 413 of Oxyrhynchus (Pr-Medjed, al-Bahnasa), Egypt, and dates back at
least to the second century CE. The play seems to be based upon
Euripides' Iphigeneia
in Tauris (Iφιγένεια ή έν Ταύροις) but is set in India instead of Greece.
This seems to prove that linguistic knowledge was passed on between India
and the Mediterranean region at least as far back as in the early part of
the first millennium CE.
     Published in 1904, these findings by E. Hultzsch were criticized and
dismissed at the time. Discovered in the meantime, the Halmidi Kannada
inscription of 450 AD corroborates many of Hultzsch' theories about the
development of Kannada and lends much credence to his work on the papyrus
inscription.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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